


Frae Ilka Danger

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Code Name Verity - Elizabeth Wein
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 02:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8351929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: Some things Maddie learns about Julie over the next few weeks:She's from Aberdeen. She's afraid of heights. She drinks her tea when it's still at a temperature that would scald normal people's mouths. She doesn't even blow on the surface to cool it. She favours red nails and red lipstick and a perfect, beautiful, sleek French twist in her hair, even on the days she's waiting outside the door at seven in the morning for someone to open up and let her in. She swears, beautifully and often, scattering foul words and phrases throughout her speech like seasoning on a plate of food. When she laughs or yawns or burps, she has a habit of pressing the back of her fingers against her mouth, then when she realises she's doing it she frowns and grabs a paper napkin to wipe the smears of lipstick off her knuckles. She likes old swing music, Katharine Hepburn, robins, Beethoven, and cherry bakewells."You're staring again," Dympna whispers one morning in late November, and Maddie spins around and starts furiously cleaning the glass pastry case to pretend that she wasn't.(Request: modern coffee shop AU, fluff, tenderness.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Squishy_TRex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squishy_TRex/gifts).



Monday starts the way the worst Mondays always do: with the growl and beep of the bin lorry rudely waking Maddie up before it's even light outside, clanging and crunching right outside her bedroom window. _Just get earplugs_ , Dympna helpfully suggested once, but then there was a row when Maddie raced into work an hour late after not hearing her alarm so she never tried again.

"Alright," she mutters, throaty with sleep and scowling with her nose scrunched into the pillow, "I'm up, I'm getting up, bloody hell." Outside, the lorry blares like it's laughing at her. To add insult to injury, when she's washed and dressed, when she slams the flat door behind herself and hops down the front steps, rucksack in one hand and bike helmet in the other, the idiots have left stray crisp packets and all sorts scattered on the path from someone's torn bin bag.

 _At least the birds are having a nice morning_ , she thinks grumpily as she's cramming her helmet on over her curly hair, tucking it out of the way so she can see properly through the visor. The press of the helmet over her ears muffles their unnecessarily cheery song a little bit, and by the time she's roaring down the road the world seems like a slightly more pleasant place to be: the glorious pink and orange glow of dawn glinting through the trees, all the burnished colours of the fallen autumn leaves, the thrum of the bike below her, and the thrill of the freezing air, the slight push of it resisting her as she zips through the empty streets of the Stockport suburbs and into town.

"You're early!" Dympna exclaims, the way she does every Monday morning, all wide eyes and exaggerated fake surprise from behind the counter where she's scribbling the day's specials with chalks on the blackboard.

"Bin day," Maddie reminds her, grimacing, and Dympna grins in response and goes to pour her a cup of tea to wake her up before the morning rush.

It's busier than usual - it's half-term, so the commuters rushing for a caffeine fix before work are followed by kids who are getting to swap a week of maths and enforced sports for hanging out with their friends, shopping and flirting and drinking elaborately constructed towers of cream and syrup. By half past ten Maddie's smile is starting to feel slightly forced, faced with yet another teenager who looks like he belongs on a television talent show, who only stops texting long enough to rattle off _extra large extra hot single shot four pumps sugar-free peppermint skimmed milk no foam stirred white mocha, extra whipped cream_. Beside her she can sense the new lad's shocked stare, the whirling cogs in his head as he tries to translate all the individual familiar words into a cohesive cup of coffee he can start to make, and gives him a quick reassuring smile. Maddie's fluent in this frilly nonsense by now, but she's never going to forget how cross she was with herself on her first day, trying desperately not to cry over a bloody stupid _drink_ , and Dympna's frazzled grin and encouraging sideways hug when they finally shooed the last fussy customer out of the door at the end of the day and locked it behind her. "Do I need to get a bigger 'Wythenshawe's' sign?" she'd asked. "They think we're bloody Starbucks."

"Take it slow," Maddie murmurs to Michael, when the boyband kid goes back to messing about on his phone. "A step at a time, like anything. Like riding a bike."

"Good advice," the next customer says when she steps up to the counter, and Maddie plasters her sunny smile on again to say good morning, feeling slightly ashamed at being overheard. "Could I have a cup of black tea, please?" The woman is beautiful in an icy Hitchcock blonde sort of way, like Kim Novak - then a mischievous little smile lifts the corner of her red-painted lips and she becomes someone else entirely. "A teabag and some hot water in an average-sized cup."

"Exactly eighty-four degrees, with seventeen pumps of vanilla, extra extra caramel, and low fat whipped cream?" Maddie asks, unable to stop herself, and the woman stifles laughter and slants a sideways glance at the kid from before.

"No, thank you. Just the tea."

"Can I have your name, please?"

Her smile notches wider, and she tilts her head to the side like a bird, staring at Maddie across the counter. "Julie," she says after a moment - and somehow, Maddie's not sure how, it sounds different to all the other names she asks for, as though there's an unspoken _very pleased to meet you_ tagged onto the end like an invisible streamer.

* * *

Some things Maddie learns about Julie over the next few weeks, most from conversation, a few she can't remember ever talking about and wonders whether she picked up via some kind of osmosis:

She's from Aberdeen. She's afraid of heights. She drinks her tea when it's still at a temperature that would scald normal people's mouths. She doesn't even blow on the surface to cool it. She favours red nails and red lipstick and a perfect, beautiful, sleek French twist in her hair, even on the days she's waiting outside the door at seven in the morning for someone to open up and let her in. She swears, beautifully and often, scattering foul words and phrases throughout her speech like seasoning on a plate of food. When she laughs or yawns or burps, she has a habit of pressing the back of her fingers against her mouth, then when she realises she's doing it she frowns and grabs a paper napkin to wipe the smears of lipstick off her knuckles. She likes old swing music, Katharine Hepburn, robins, Beethoven, and cherry bakewells.

"You're staring again," Dympna whispers one morning in late November, and Maddie spins around and starts furiously cleaning the glass pastry case to pretend that she wasn't.

At home that night, unable to sleep, she can't help wondering what Julie knows about her - whether she knows anything at all, or whether Maddie stops existing for her the moment Julie steps out of the coffee shop door and into whatever the rest of her life consists of.

(Things Maddie hasn't learned about Julie: what she does for a living.)

* * *

It's two weeks before Christmas and two minutes before closing when the bell above the door jingles, and Maddie tries not to let her inward groan become an outward one. She starts to say hello, but all at once notices a whole stack of things and falls into a stunned, horrified silence.

It's Julie.

She looks exhausted.

Her neck is swollen and bruised in the shape of vicious, choking fingers.

Her lipstick has faded, but there's an ugly little scabbed cut slashed through her cupid's bow.

"What _happened_?" Maddie asks, glancing at the dark windows with a strange, vague terror that whoever hurt her might be lurking around outside watching them. It's the first time she touches Julie, a steadying hand on her elbow over the counter. The first time Julie touches her too - cold, trembling fingers pressed to the back of Maddie's hand.

"I really, really needed a cup of tea." She laughs - a horrible, unamused, brittle sort of sound, nothing at all like her usual infectious, raucous yell. "I don't know why I didn't go back to my rooms. I have a kettle there, of course."

"Should you be in the hospital? Do you need me to phone the police? Who did this?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm alright. I'll _be_ alright," Julie amends, trying a smile. There's something off about her appearance, aside from the bruising; it takes a moment for Maddie to realise it's Julie's hair, tied back tightly in a severe bun instead of its usual elegant twist, and the unfamiliar beige shade of her lipstick. She scrubs this off with a napkin, as though she's reading Maddie's thoughts, and then reaches back, wincing as though the movement is hurting her shoulders, to start yanking pins out of her hair. She looks more like herself when she's done, somehow, even though Maddie's never seen her with her hair down like this - waved from the twist of the bun, soft and curling around the sharp curved lines of jaw and cheekbone.

"Julie," Maddie starts, then stops because she doesn't know what else to say.

Julie makes a soft, Scottish sort of noise - _och_ \- and laughs again, a notch more natural than before, something clearer and calmer beginning to show in her eyes. "How much extra for a wee dram of your best Macallan?"

"It'd be on the house if we had it," Maddie says, and feels the sudden, stroking movement of Julie's thumb swooping gently back and forth across her fingers. "Tea," she says, feeling stupid. "I'll make your tea now." But Julie doesn't release her, and there's not very much in the world that would make her want to move away from this curious, fragile moment of touch and unspoken words, so she stays where she is, hip leaning against the edge of the counter and her eyes fixed on Julie's, barely even blinking. "I've got rum in my flat," she says. Blurts, really, the words falling out of her mouth as sudden and unexpected as a sneeze. "Beer, I think, and really very bad wine. It's not whisky, but--"

"Lead the way," Julie says quietly.

She's delighted by the motorbike, but insists on Maddie wearing the helmet when she offers it because she says her neck and head hurt too much, and then Maddie frets all the way home - drives more carefully and slowly than she did even during her test, terrified that she's going to suddenly forget everything she knows and smear them both up the road like jam spread on a slice of toast. In another world, she thinks vaguely, they're doing this and it's better - no bruises, no secrets, no fear, rocketing through the countryside with Julie's arms clutching tightly around her waist, not creeping frightened through the suburbs in the dark.

"Let me help you," Maddie says when she pulls up by the gate, and when they get to the steps, and in the bathroom when she finds a cloth to dab at Julie's bloody mouth. Julie sits there on the closed toilet and lets her do it, not flinching even though it must sting. Just sits still, silent, blue eyes following every movement of Maddie's hands and then coming to rest on her face. A quick downward glance to her mouth.

Julie flinches when Maddie kisses her, but her fingers are twined and clutching in Maddie's hair so she guesses it doesn't mean stop. She moves over a little way instead, a strange awkward angle, a kiss that covers only half of Julie's mouth and spills over onto the soft curve of her cheek. Maddie can feel the movement of a smile under her lips then, a starburst of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach, and Julie's fingers - not trembling any more, but steady and sure as ever - stroking her hair, unfastening a couple of buttons on her work shirt and tracing the long line of her collarbone.

"You don't get this sort of service at the hospital," Julie murmurs against Maddie's mouth, soft and warm and amused. When Maddie can't help laughing, the embarrassment in it is drowned out, overwhelmed, by something sweeter, strangely comfortable, as though they've known each other before.


End file.
